Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, January–February 2014; 28(1–2): 2–4 ß 2014 Informa UK Ltd. ISSN: 0269-9206 print / 1464-5076 online DOI: 10.3109/02699206.2013.826285
Introduction
PAUL FLETCHER1, BRENDAN S. WEEKES2, & TARA WHITEHILL2 1
Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University College Cork, Ireland and 2Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong (Submitted 15 July 2013)
20 14
The papers in this special issue of Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics stem from the Third International Conference on Problem-based Learning (PBL) in Speech Pathology and Audiology, held at the University of Hong Kong in December 2011.1 The PBL approach to curriculum delivery is of relatively recent application to the education of speech-language pathologists, and this is the first collection of research papers in which a majority focuses specifically on this discipline. The tutorial paper by Whitehill, Bridges and Chan is a comprehensive overview of PBL. The authors review the philosophical basis for the approach, address the implications of adopting PBL for curriculum design, and review different models of PBL, before going into more detail on how the learning process is intended to work via problems. They conclude with an account of the implementation of a specific PBL programme in speech-language pathology at the University of Hong Kong. In the course of their tour d’horizon, Whitehill et al. cite a wide range of research on PBL in various disciplines. The paper that rounds off our collection, by Prosser and Sze, looks in detail at one important section of this research, scrutinizing meta-analyses of outcome studies of PBL in the Health Sciences. These studies compare the students who have followed PBL programmes against those graduating from ‘‘traditional’’ curricula, for example in their ability to retain knowledge long-term, or their satisfaction with their learning experience. In a synthesis of available meta-analyses in the first part of their paper, Prosser and Sze conclude that evidence for the effectiveness of PBL is compelling. However, they characterize this type of research as being ‘‘outside the black box’’, in that it deals purely with the results of this pedagogic approach, and does not lend insight to what happens inside the curriculum, where students learn and tutors promote that learning. The second part of Prosser and Sze, does go ‘‘inside the black box’’, as do several of the papers that immediately follow Whitehill et al. These reports use the reflections of tutors and students to explore the role of the tutor, the dynamics of the tutorial and the responsibilities of both parties in ensuring successful learning.
1 This conference was supported with funds from the Faculty of Education and the Strategic Research Themes in Communication Disorders and Science of Learning at the University of Hong Kong. The fourth conference on PBL in Speech Pathology and Audiology will take place at the University of Lund, Sweden, 22–23 May 2014.
Correspondence: Paul Fletcher, Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University College Cork, Ireland. E-mail: [email protected]
Introduction
3
Slattery and Douglas explore the role of the PBL tutor (also referred to as the facilitator) via a survey of the perceptions and opinions of novice and experienced tutors. Tutors face a number of challenges, both in adapting to the role of tutor after perhaps years using more traditional teaching methods and in maintaining effective performance over time. For all tutors, the conflict between the desire to instruct and the requirement to simply guide learning is an ever-present challenge. The results of this study underline the problems that can face both novice and experienced tutors. They also suggest specific areas that can usefully be addressed in the professional development of tutors within a PBL learning environment. ˚ hlander, Lundskog and Hansson emphasizes that the professional The study by Lyberg-A ˚ hlander et al. development of, and support for, tutors should be a continuing process. Lyberg-A report analyses of open, semi-structured interviews with tutors with varying degrees of experience. Many of the issues raised in these interviews resonate with topics raised in the Slattery and Douglas paper, and it is clear that experience is no guarantee against some of the recurring challenges of the role – managing group dynamics, expert versus non-expert perspectives on aspects of the problem under consideration, instruction versus guidance and so on. All tutors express the need for and value of continuing training for their role, a view endorsed by the available research. The next paper, McAllister et al., again via semi-structured interviews, gathered opinion from students as well as tutors, in a bid to identify themes that would reflect common concerns among participants in the PBL process. An important finding from the McAllister et al. study is that the student perspective can provide useful feedback for tutor dilemmas. For example, although students accept that they are responsible for their own learning, they are of the view that the learning process works best when tutors guide in tutorials, rather than instruct, or direct the learning process. Another study which analysed feedback from students is that by Kong. Graduate students with no previous exposure to PBL in their studies were given direct experience with PBL in a cognitive communication disorders course. Kong found that students acknowledged the benefits to critical thinking and knowledge application that they felt came from their interactive experiences in the tutorials. Anyone with experience as a PBL tutor will be aware that students do not always contribute equally in sessions. Tutors in the McAllister et al. study raised the issue of the ‘‘quiet student’’ and what to do about silence in tutorials. However, the results from Jin Jun’s study demonstrate that silence can be a positive feature of a session. This study involved students viewing video clips of episodes from a tutorial in which they had been silent, and recalling what they had been thinking during those interludes. Their self-reports indicate that they were actively engaged in reflecting on the subject matter of the tutorial – digesting information which had just been presented to the group, recalling prior information, considering hypotheses. A key feature of these episodes was that the tutor, recognizing the beneficial effects of silence in these instances, did not intervene. Mok, Whitehill and Dodd consider the regular monitoring of students’ critical thinking via the use of concept maps. They developed a measurement procedure for the concept maps that students produce at the conclusion of a tutorial series devoted to a particular problem statement, labelled the Concept Map Assessment Profile (CMAP). Mok et al. report that CMAP is a reliable measure and it also predicts a significant amount of variance in standard outcome assessments of students’ performance over the first three years of a four-year BSc programme. In that they interrogate the learning that has taken place within a particular sequence of tutorials, these CMAP assessments can also be seen as a window in to the black box. A major aim of the SLP curriculum is to educate effective clinicians, and it is widely assumed that the PBL curriculum enhances this process. The paper by Ho, Whitehill and Ciocca examines the relationship between the PBL classroom and the clinic and provides empirical support for this assumption. In addition to concept maps, assessment of student tutorial performance includes the evaluation of reflective journals, reading forms and tutor evaluation (see the ‘‘Assessment of
4
P. Fletcher et al.
process of learning’’ section in Whitehill et al. for details). Clinical performance in this study was assessed by clinical tutors on an in-house evaluation form, and via COMPASSÕ , which is a standardized competency assessment developed in Australia. Significant correlations were found between dimensions of the learning process, and features of the evaluation form; and between features of the learning process and the overall score on COMPASSÕ , as well as particular competencies identified in this assessment. We move on in our penultimate paper to a practical issue which is particularly – but not exclusively – relevant for courses which are based in large urban areas involving long journey times for students. Ng and colleagues provide an existence proof for conducting PBL tutorials online, with tutor and students all in different physical locations. In this pilot study, in which Adobe Connect was used to video-link the participants, students engaged in sessions online with their tutor for a four-week period. Students not only indicated satisfaction with this novel procedure, but they performed equally well in outcome assessments when compared to a control group of students who had face-to-face interactions in the more typical tutorial group format. This study suggests that new technology could provide a cost-effective and efficient alternative method for the delivery of the benefits of a PBL curriculum, where circumstances permit or promote. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to the Editors of Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics for affording the opportunity to publish this set of papers. We hope that the dissemination of this information via the Journal will stimulate interest in this pedagogical method among its readers, many of whom will be involved in the education of speech-language pathologists. The integrative approach of the PBL process, we believe, has much to offer a curriculum which depends on – and is enriched by – diverse contributions from several distinct disciplines.
Copyright of Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
Introduction
PAUL FLETCHER1, BRENDAN S. WEEKES2, & TARA WHITEHILL2 1
Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University College Cork, Ireland and 2Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong (Submitted 15 July 2013)
20 14
The papers in this special issue of Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics stem from the Third International Conference on Problem-based Learning (PBL) in Speech Pathology and Audiology, held at the University of Hong Kong in December 2011.1 The PBL approach to curriculum delivery is of relatively recent application to the education of speech-language pathologists, and this is the first collection of research papers in which a majority focuses specifically on this discipline. The tutorial paper by Whitehill, Bridges and Chan is a comprehensive overview of PBL. The authors review the philosophical basis for the approach, address the implications of adopting PBL for curriculum design, and review different models of PBL, before going into more detail on how the learning process is intended to work via problems. They conclude with an account of the implementation of a specific PBL programme in speech-language pathology at the University of Hong Kong. In the course of their tour d’horizon, Whitehill et al. cite a wide range of research on PBL in various disciplines. The paper that rounds off our collection, by Prosser and Sze, looks in detail at one important section of this research, scrutinizing meta-analyses of outcome studies of PBL in the Health Sciences. These studies compare the students who have followed PBL programmes against those graduating from ‘‘traditional’’ curricula, for example in their ability to retain knowledge long-term, or their satisfaction with their learning experience. In a synthesis of available meta-analyses in the first part of their paper, Prosser and Sze conclude that evidence for the effectiveness of PBL is compelling. However, they characterize this type of research as being ‘‘outside the black box’’, in that it deals purely with the results of this pedagogic approach, and does not lend insight to what happens inside the curriculum, where students learn and tutors promote that learning. The second part of Prosser and Sze, does go ‘‘inside the black box’’, as do several of the papers that immediately follow Whitehill et al. These reports use the reflections of tutors and students to explore the role of the tutor, the dynamics of the tutorial and the responsibilities of both parties in ensuring successful learning.
1 This conference was supported with funds from the Faculty of Education and the Strategic Research Themes in Communication Disorders and Science of Learning at the University of Hong Kong. The fourth conference on PBL in Speech Pathology and Audiology will take place at the University of Lund, Sweden, 22–23 May 2014.
Correspondence: Paul Fletcher, Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University College Cork, Ireland. E-mail: [email protected]
Introduction
3
Slattery and Douglas explore the role of the PBL tutor (also referred to as the facilitator) via a survey of the perceptions and opinions of novice and experienced tutors. Tutors face a number of challenges, both in adapting to the role of tutor after perhaps years using more traditional teaching methods and in maintaining effective performance over time. For all tutors, the conflict between the desire to instruct and the requirement to simply guide learning is an ever-present challenge. The results of this study underline the problems that can face both novice and experienced tutors. They also suggest specific areas that can usefully be addressed in the professional development of tutors within a PBL learning environment. ˚ hlander, Lundskog and Hansson emphasizes that the professional The study by Lyberg-A ˚ hlander et al. development of, and support for, tutors should be a continuing process. Lyberg-A report analyses of open, semi-structured interviews with tutors with varying degrees of experience. Many of the issues raised in these interviews resonate with topics raised in the Slattery and Douglas paper, and it is clear that experience is no guarantee against some of the recurring challenges of the role – managing group dynamics, expert versus non-expert perspectives on aspects of the problem under consideration, instruction versus guidance and so on. All tutors express the need for and value of continuing training for their role, a view endorsed by the available research. The next paper, McAllister et al., again via semi-structured interviews, gathered opinion from students as well as tutors, in a bid to identify themes that would reflect common concerns among participants in the PBL process. An important finding from the McAllister et al. study is that the student perspective can provide useful feedback for tutor dilemmas. For example, although students accept that they are responsible for their own learning, they are of the view that the learning process works best when tutors guide in tutorials, rather than instruct, or direct the learning process. Another study which analysed feedback from students is that by Kong. Graduate students with no previous exposure to PBL in their studies were given direct experience with PBL in a cognitive communication disorders course. Kong found that students acknowledged the benefits to critical thinking and knowledge application that they felt came from their interactive experiences in the tutorials. Anyone with experience as a PBL tutor will be aware that students do not always contribute equally in sessions. Tutors in the McAllister et al. study raised the issue of the ‘‘quiet student’’ and what to do about silence in tutorials. However, the results from Jin Jun’s study demonstrate that silence can be a positive feature of a session. This study involved students viewing video clips of episodes from a tutorial in which they had been silent, and recalling what they had been thinking during those interludes. Their self-reports indicate that they were actively engaged in reflecting on the subject matter of the tutorial – digesting information which had just been presented to the group, recalling prior information, considering hypotheses. A key feature of these episodes was that the tutor, recognizing the beneficial effects of silence in these instances, did not intervene. Mok, Whitehill and Dodd consider the regular monitoring of students’ critical thinking via the use of concept maps. They developed a measurement procedure for the concept maps that students produce at the conclusion of a tutorial series devoted to a particular problem statement, labelled the Concept Map Assessment Profile (CMAP). Mok et al. report that CMAP is a reliable measure and it also predicts a significant amount of variance in standard outcome assessments of students’ performance over the first three years of a four-year BSc programme. In that they interrogate the learning that has taken place within a particular sequence of tutorials, these CMAP assessments can also be seen as a window in to the black box. A major aim of the SLP curriculum is to educate effective clinicians, and it is widely assumed that the PBL curriculum enhances this process. The paper by Ho, Whitehill and Ciocca examines the relationship between the PBL classroom and the clinic and provides empirical support for this assumption. In addition to concept maps, assessment of student tutorial performance includes the evaluation of reflective journals, reading forms and tutor evaluation (see the ‘‘Assessment of
4
P. Fletcher et al.
process of learning’’ section in Whitehill et al. for details). Clinical performance in this study was assessed by clinical tutors on an in-house evaluation form, and via COMPASSÕ , which is a standardized competency assessment developed in Australia. Significant correlations were found between dimensions of the learning process, and features of the evaluation form; and between features of the learning process and the overall score on COMPASSÕ , as well as particular competencies identified in this assessment. We move on in our penultimate paper to a practical issue which is particularly – but not exclusively – relevant for courses which are based in large urban areas involving long journey times for students. Ng and colleagues provide an existence proof for conducting PBL tutorials online, with tutor and students all in different physical locations. In this pilot study, in which Adobe Connect was used to video-link the participants, students engaged in sessions online with their tutor for a four-week period. Students not only indicated satisfaction with this novel procedure, but they performed equally well in outcome assessments when compared to a control group of students who had face-to-face interactions in the more typical tutorial group format. This study suggests that new technology could provide a cost-effective and efficient alternative method for the delivery of the benefits of a PBL curriculum, where circumstances permit or promote. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to the Editors of Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics for affording the opportunity to publish this set of papers. We hope that the dissemination of this information via the Journal will stimulate interest in this pedagogical method among its readers, many of whom will be involved in the education of speech-language pathologists. The integrative approach of the PBL process, we believe, has much to offer a curriculum which depends on – and is enriched by – diverse contributions from several distinct disciplines.
Copyright of Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
